Fans of Narnia and The Lost Magician rejoice, this magical filled adventure is like no other.
Hidden worlds explored through suitcases – this book, by author L.D.Lapinski is the perfect addition for portal story topics.
It was…sort of beautiful. Like a book that’s been read so many times the cover has filled off and the pages have started to curl, or a soft bear that’s has all its fur loved away.
The StrangeWorlds Travel Agency. L.D.Lapinski.
Flick, who is new to town with her family, is just an ordinary girl. Little does she know when she happens across an archaic looking travel agency brimming with suitcases adorning the walls that she is far from ordinary and this is where her adventure begins.
Flick discovers, with the help of Jonathan, that there are many other worlds waiting for her. All she has to do to visit them is to step inside a suitcase.Unknown to Flick, a world at the centre of it all, a city called Five Lights, is in peril. Streets and buildings are disappearing overnight. Will Flick be able to save the city and its inhabitants before it is too late?
Not only is this book the perfect support to exploring portal stories but it also highlights friendship themes, with a female heroine at the centre of the action – this is a great book for adventure lovers and those enthused about the notion of alternate worlds. Welcome to the Strangeways Travel Agency is filled with descriptions from the wildest realms of your mind.
Fans of Enid Blyton rejoice as Wilbur Smith’s first in a series of children’s literature is released. Cloudburst is a gripping adventure story with geographical and environemntal links encassed in friendship, loss and love. Most suited to those aged 10+ this book would make a great addition to teaching children more about the world around them and opening their eyes up to a world full of adventure.
Meet protagonist Jack, a fourteen year old boy, who joins his parent’s on a trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in aid of an environmental conference. Joined by his friends Amelia and Xander, Jack finds himself on an unexpected adventure, one that he was not prepared for. There is more than gorilla tracking planned for Jack.
Upon overcoming turbulence and diversions set to throw them off course, arriving in the DRC Jack finds himself face to face with his insufferable cousin, Caleb, who at a lose end joins him and his friends on a safari that unfurls, revealing dark twists and turns that will leave you gripping your seat, unable to predict what is going to happen next.
Arriving back to base, Jack is blown another curveball, as it arises that his parent’s have gone missing – kidnapped, it later transpires. Feeling alone and helpless in the DRC, Jack with the help of Amelia, a brainbox character, who see’s the world in black and white (will resonate with many), and Xander fight to uncover the truth in an unforgiving environment.
Sprinkled throughout the book are sparkling gems – rebirth of characters, secrets forging closer relationships, determination, perseverance and strength, which shine through, making Cloudburst a great teaching resource camouflaged in an adventure story for children.
I was lucky to attend the Reading Well launch at Maidenhead library. Reading Well is a programme set up by The Reading Agency to help children understand their health and wellbeing, using helpful reading. The books are all recommended by health experts, as well as people living with the conditions covered and their relatives and carers.
Reading Well for children supports the mental health and wellbeing of children, providing children and their families and carers with information, advice and support for coping with feelings and worries, daily life and getting through a tough time.
Reading Well, The Reading Agency
Tom Percival, author of Ruby’s Worry, Ravi’s Roar and Perfectly Norman – books dealing with worries, anger and standing out – held a session detailing how important it is for children to feel they have an outlet, to feel they can turn to a book for help. I found him very inspiring and went into school the next day to tell my class all about it. Tom takes a lot of inspiration for his books from his personal life. I was lucky that I managed to get a couple of Tom’s books donated by @biggergreenbooks on one of their #buyastrangerabook events where people gift other people books!
The NSPCC said that the number of referrals by schools in England seeking mental health treatment for pupils has risen by more than a third over the last three years.Â
I am in the midst of setting up a Reading Well section of my school library, I feel it is extremely important that children know they can find some reprieve or support in a book, if they feel they can’t yet talk to someone. Hopefully a book will guide and aid them in the way they need. I think every classroom needs a set of Reading Well books, a full list can be found here. The books take harrowing experiences and are written in a narrative that children can relate to, take heed and comfort from.
If you would like to donate a book from the list to our Reading Well section please feel free to contact me.
Do you have a Reading Well section in your school?
Wink is a heartfelt story about a boy called Ross, who finds his world tipped upside down when he is diagnosed with an extremely rare and devastating form of eye cancer. Not only does he have horrific treatment to deal with and the impending loss of eyesight but one of two best friends – Isaac has peeled himself away. Known as the cancer kid is bad enough but then Ross is thrown another curve ball when he is informed that he must wear a hat at all times: in the car, school and the classroom. Things take a turn for the worse and Ross must face the ever growing issues of cyber taunting that is apparent in today’s modern world of evolving technology.
Ross just wants to blend in but now that seems impossible, he is delivered the devastating news that it is not only his hair he will lose, but his eyesight. In both eyes. Ross’s world begins to spiral out of control as he faces the facts – will he lose his life to cancer like his mum? As he tries to shut out the harrowing events from school that haunt his every waking moment he turns to music. With the help of his hospital technician Frank, he escapes, if only momentarily, in the rhythm.
Why blend in when you were born to stand out.
Wonder, R J Palacio
An avid doodler, Ross’s alter ego Batpig spatters Wink with cartoon, comic-strip flare to lighten the mood, making this book ideal for children and adults alike. I found close links with Wonder by R J Palacio and felt this book would support PSHE themes, focusing on self-acceptance, friendship turmoil and escapism. It is hard enough navigating your way through the battlefield that is high school without a life-threatening illness added to the mix. I am in the midst of creating a Reading Well section in my school library and Wink will be the perfect addition. I would highly recommend that EVERYONE read Wink and feel strongly that it should appear on all KS2 reading spines. It is a heart-warming book written for children and the underlying messages are worth extending to all.
Author Rob Harrell wrote Wink based on his own experience of rare eye-cancer. This semi-biographical novel takes very real middle-school life and throws it in the blender. Join Ross and Batpig on an adventure as they navigate their way through this labyrinth that life has thrown them. Will the doctors and radical proton beam radiation be able to save Ross’s eyesight?
Wink is available for purchase here from 31st March 2020. Review copy sent by Piccadilly Press
Book chats with pupils are the best! My class know I am book mad, they love asking me “what’s your favourite underwater book?” I have spent many break duties surrounded by a group of Y6 boys discussing all things book related. I try read as many children’s books as I can get my hands on so that I can recommend them to entice a love of reading. Each class has a library slot each week and the children aimlessly walking around are who I approach and ask “what type of stories do you like?” I then try to find them the perfect book to lose themselves in (with the help of the library monitors of course). Sometimes I read a book and have a child in mind who just HAS to read it as I know they will be enthralled.
It is from one of these many chats that a pupil brought in The Trouble with Perfect and declared “I know you said you loved book one so I brought this in for you to read.” I could not wait to get back to violet and Boy in Perfect and find out what their next adventure entailed. You don’ have to read these books in order but I would suggest you do so that you have an understanding of how their bond forged through unexpected events.
Perfect or Town as it is now called after the demise of George and Edward Archer, twins, who tried to mould the perfect community through mind-controlling techniques: rose-tinted glasses and tainted tea, is under attack once more. There are some strange goings on and Violet is not entirely sure that Boy is the boy she thought he was, as all fingers point to him for blame but can she deny what she sees with her own eyes? First robberies, then children start to disappear at the hands of a child snatcher, who is half zombie half mechanical, complete with the eye plants that gripped me from the first book! This is no ordinary adventure story!
“The Child Snatcher was also dotted in bits of coloured fur, which seemed to be stitched onto him like patchwork.”
Author Helena Duggan writes with such flair that you find yourself gripped from start to end, there are so many twists and turns you can’t predict what is going to happen. Underpinned in this story is the theme of friendship, family and love – unlike traditional happily ever after stories, Duggan has written in some dark outcomes and raw truths, which offers this book its intertwined ribbons weaved with real life. Eye-plants and tainted tea aside the underpinning themes will resonate with many.
“His jet-black iris edged in ice blue, like the silver of a winter’s moon.”
The Trouble with Perfect offers fantastic examples of characterisation, suspense and setting descriptions, which will be great additions to the classroom in identifying toolkits and displaying the tools that help authors sew their stories together. Fans of Cogheart by Peter Bunzl and Brightstorm by Vashti Hardy would enjoy this gruesome, action packed adventure series.
Thanks for reading, please leave a comment and let me know what you are reading this half term.
As I head into the second half of the year, I find myself, like many other reflecting on past practise, what I have learnt and will take forward into this term. We were lucky enough to have an inset with Oliver Caviglioli last year on dual coding, I am sure you have heard something about it on Twitter. As always these are the mere ramblings of a teacher on the search for ways to support children with their learning in the classroom, I am by no way claiming to have all the answers. I hope you find this useful, please leave a comment below.
Dual Coding Theory is not new but has recently gained a lot of attention and is widely implemented. At its core the idea is that you talk over pictures – icons to be precise and those with minimalist colour-even better. This enables children to process and comprehend the information more effectively – allowing them to file it away nicely, ready to retrieve later, which is what we all want – this is learning.
According to Oliver, when you talk over images children are getting the best of both worlds; the images are processed through their visual channel as your words entering their auditory channel Children have around 3-4 working memory blocks to take onboard new information in any one session, once these are full they effectively loose the new information so it is vital to keep it simple and effective.
Simple icons exhibit the least demand on working memory (a clear image is easy to decipher). This alongside aligning everything to the left (including text and titles) because our brains are wired to read left to right, provides the best learning environment.
Dual Coding Theory lends itself to those children that struggle the most, Oliver stipulates that by providing children with your schemas (a representation of a plan or theory in the form of an outline or model) it lays it all on the table explicitly – there are no secrets. There is a vast number of schemas – I have included an exceprt from Oliver Caviglioli’s books Dual Coding With Teachers below. I highly recommend reading the book, you can purchase it here.
Last year I took Y5 on our annual Easter trip to the church, the presenters were brilliant! Talking over images and the use of videos really engaged the pupils and later when asked, enabled them to easily recall facts and information they learnt on the trip and further relate them to topics and vocabulary we have since looked at. When children link text to imagery, they can recall the information easier at a later date.
We have tried to implement these ideas across all subjects. We follow Rosehnshine’s principal of instruction for our lesson templates in our shared planning. Our slides look like this across the school in all subjects where applicable:
Title slide
Review
Vocabulary
New learning
Worked example
Guided practice
Independent learning
Metacognition
Combining dual coding with our slides was fairly easy. I switched to PowerPoint so that I can add notes for teacher to read and simply display a schema, icon, image or video on the screen for the children to see. As a result, our slides are clear and concise. All children are able to access the content and take part in the lesson. As per Oli’s advice, I reveal my schema (not always accurately I am sure!) to the class and explain that they should make notes, following this we then use these notes to form a written answer. There are lots of simple icons available at https://thenounproject.com
Below is an example of a grammar review slide using Dual Coding Theory – it is clear (I hope) to see that the images depict the pronouns she, he, you and they or them, this will be supported with the teacher talking about pronouns and what the images stand for. The gridlines can be viewed in PowerPoint to help you line everything up neatly – they don’t show in slideshow setting. It is more aesthetically pleasing that a text-heavy slide.
A technique to further support recall, that Oliver demonstrated during our inset session was the draw, trace and tell. Once drawn, using the index finger on the dominant hand to point to each image and recall the fact, name or information aloud to a paired-partner enables the information to be remembered and recalled at a later day. It really works! As you can see below.
It is still a work in progress but I have found it highly effective in reading lessons; children create images depicting the key points in a given extract. At a later date, the children use these images to write a paragraph summarising the chapter. Summarising is something I have found children really struggled with and this has helped them a lot! It is also great for information heavy topics such as history and science.
Here is a slide for a Y6 history lesson on The Battle of Britain, I will display this while explaining that WWII occurred from 1939-1945 when Hitler invaded Poland. These are key facts drawn from our knowledge organiser.
After a few more similar slides and discussion with some questioning to assess understanding (children draw, trace and tell), I will show this sequential schema, depicting how you can order notes, followed by a short paragraph drawing information from notes.
How do you use Dual Coding Theory?What will you be taking into the new term?
I thoroughly enjoyed going on a fact-finding adventure aboard The Highway Falcon, a locomotive on its final royal voyage. Hal, who reluctantly joins his travel-writer uncle, finds more than he anticipated when he is thrown into the role of unveiling a jewel thief. Brimming with twists and turns, this engaging book will entice and captivate all.
M.G. Leonard (best selling author of Beetle Boy) and Sam Sedgman (debut author) team up to write this steam filled adventure and do so seamlessly. It will leave you wanting more and pining for the next in the series.
I especially loved learning how a locomotive operates through the narrative of two children and feel this is a great way to increase children’s general knowledge of times gone by. This would lend itself really well to introducing steam-works, train mechanisms or rescue stories to children.
“She smiled graciously, her red lips lifting like a theatre curtain, revealing ultra-white teeth.
Hal, who feels he has been sent away as his mother is having a baby, is an avid sketcher, this is mirrored throughout the book with superb illustrations by Elisa Paganelli. Once he finds his train legs uses his observations to piece together clues to solve the mystery of the jewel thief among a spattering of royal decrees including a prince, princess, actress and baron. Surely they wold have no need to steal jewels, would they? Can Hal outsmart the police in the first of a series of mysteries?
“The mess of clues that had seemed as scattered as children in a playground were coming together in patterns.”
I would recommend this book to adventure and detective lovers: reveal clues as you read to help you unscramble the mystery but will you solve it before they reach the end of the line?
To start with I felt this book wasn’t for me…but as the characters evolved and I understood who belonged to which tribe the story really gripped me.
I especially loved the major twists and turns which always kept me guessing and wanting more! I am still trying to figure out the secret narrator!
Fans of the How to Train Your Dragon series will absolutely love this series from Cressida Cowell. Teetering with wizards, witches, warriors, snowcats, Giants, sprites and other magical creatures including a charismtic enchanted spoon, this book takes you on a magical journey Through the dark, forbidden Badwoods, rumoured to be brimming with dark magic and once home to evil witches in search of the real meaning in folklore tales, myths and legends
A conceited, mischievous wizard called Xar, who has no magic and will do anything to get it, leads his gang of eccentric sprites, giant and snowcats on an adventure in search of witches and their dark magic-which all goes horribly wrong at every turn. Xar is on the brink of expulsion from the wizard tribe, ruled by his father Encanto does little to reign in his unruly behaviour.
On his expedition he encounters Wish, who is an eye-patch-wearing warrior with unruly hair and a limp, daughter to the Queen of the arch enemy warrior tribe, owns a banned magical object and will do anything to conceal it. Wish akin to Xar is also the black sheep of the family and is chasing after an enchanted spoon through the forest with her bemused bodyguard Bodkin, who has an unfortunate habit of falling asleep in the eye of danger, hot on her pursuit. For magic and the Badwoods are forbidden to warriors.
What lurks in the shadows of the Badwoods is far darker, mysterious and malevolent than either side has ever anticipated and now they must put their differences aside and work together to save their tribes. But Wish is concealing a darker secret, one that even she doesn’t yet know!
I would use this book with UKS2 as it has some brilliantly, dark and evil descriptions, especially those of the Kingwitch.
This summer I have reignited my love for reading through a variety of children’s literature.
I visited my local library, scouring for titles and authors recommended on Twitter. Bettle Boy by M. G. Leonard was one of them. I purchased this book amongst others at the beginning of the last school year and it has sat on the bookshelf in the classroom ever since. I have heard great things about it from adults and children so I thought it was time to read it.
Bettle Boy is a story brimming with science, adventure and humour, starring protagonist Darkus, an awkward thirteen-year-old boy, whose father, Director of Science for the Natural History Museum, mysteriously disappears. From a locked room! Vanished into thin air! In order to discover what has happened, Darkus moves in with his peculiar uncle Max, who is not well equipped for children and lives next door to two crazy cousins, one of whom has an unusually large beetle infestation. Darkus soon realises that the beetles are anything but ordinary and he is not the only one with an avid interest in them. Alliances forge to overthrow the evil antagonist fashionista-villainess- Lucretia Cutter who threatens to destroy the colony and holds the key to his dads disappearance. As the first in this epic trilogy – the story is only just starting!
Written in a highly entertaining and extremely informative way, M. G. Leonard has captured the wonderful, supernatural world of beetles magically! A must read for mini-beast detective fans looking for their next adventure.
I would recommend this to those aged 9+ or as an adult led text. This would be a great addition to those exploring suspense or setting description writing and is ideal for looking at how writers describe characters. I especially loved the dung throwing beetles, who launch an epic, tummy-churning attack on those who threaten their existence. Themes in this book include: determination, perseverance, friendship and heroism.
I have always been an avid reader, but since becoming a teacher and taking on reading lead, I have veered towards children’s lit. And to tell you the truth I have been blown away, there are some truly amazing books out there, I have read amongst others: The House with Chicken Legs, The Boy at the Back of the Class, The Girl of Ink and Stars
I am currently reading Beatle Boy by M. G. Leonard and I must say this book is a gem! brimming with fantastic examples of setting descriptions and characterisation which would be amazing to show children when looking at our Talk for writing (T4W) units, during our toolkit exploration stage, supporting our focus text. How would we do this without reading the books ourselves and somehow organising it so you knew which book lent itself to which toolkit. By toolkit I am merely talking about how writers describe characters or how writers create suspense etc.
As a mum of two boys and having really enjoyed immersing myself in such brilliant reads, I have tried and failed to entice my own children (aged 8 and 11) into some of the magical worlds I have fallen willingly into. This summer I have devoured at least 7 books with more on the to be read pile, most in single sittings because they are that gripping. I want all children to be THAT gripped. I would feign annoyance at the child engrossed in a book when I have said ‘books away’ but on the inside I would be overjoyed!
I have downloaded so many lovely and recommended books onto my children’s kindle and yet they sit unread. So I asked them why they aren’t reading – they claim they aren’t interested,’
‘Ok,’ I resign. ‘What author or type of books do you want to read?’ fearing, yet receiving the dreaded response; ‘David Walliams, I like his books.’ Here lies the dilemma – if I download what they like they will read, if I download what I want them to read, they sit unread. I downloaded a book they requested, they sat for hours reading exclaiming ‘I love reading, this book is great!’ I just want to add that I have nothing against David Walliams or Diary of the wimpy kid books, they definitely provide a gateway to a love of reading for a lot of children, but I would like them to stretch themselves further; pick up more vocabulary and magpie different writing styles through reading.
Why is this? Is it because the authors are famous, they have made films about the books, they are easier to read? Is it just my children? Is it because god forbid, I am a teacher, ‘stop listening, she is trying to teach us something….’
This will not stop me reading children’s literature because for one, I enjoy it and I want to have great examples of varying writing styles to recommend to the children in my class with the hope that some may choose to go on to read the book, but at the vary least they will have been exposed to the text.
So I ask you the question: who are children’s books aimed at? Who is the real audience?
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